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Production of fluconazole-loaded polymeric micelles using membrane and microfluidic dispersion devices
journal contribution
posted on 2016-06-13, 15:38 authored by Yu Lu, Danial Chowdhury, Goran VladisavljevicGoran Vladisavljevic, Konstantinos P. Koutroumanis, Stella GeorgiadouStella GeorgiadouPolymeric micelles with a controlled size in the range between 41 and 80 nm were prepared
by injecting the organic phase through a microengineered nickel membrane or a tapered-end glass capillary into an aqueous phase. The organic phase was composed of 1 mg mL 1 of PEG-b-PCL
diblock copolymers with variable molecular weights, dissolved in tetrahydrofuran (THF) or acetone. The pore size of the membrane was 20 m and the aqueous/organic phase volumetric flow rate ratio ranged from 1.5 to 10. Block copolymers were successfully synthesized withMn ranging from ~9700 to 16,000 g mol 1 and polymeric micelles were successfully produced from both devices. Micelles produced from the membrane device were smaller than those produced from the microfluidic device, due to the much smaller pore size compared with the orifice size in a co-flow device. The micelles were found to be relatively stable in terms of their size with an initial decrease in size attributed to evaporation of residual solvent rather than their structural disintegration. Fluconazole was loaded into the cores of micelles by injecting the organic phase composed of 0.5–2.5 mg mL 1 fluconazole and 1.5 mg mL 1 copolymer. The size of the drug-loaded micelles was found to be significantly larger than the size of empty micelles.
Funding
This project was completed with the support of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom (the grant reference number: EP/HO29923/1).
History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Chemical Engineering
Published in
MembranesVolume
6Issue
2Pages
1 - 19Citation
LU, Y. ... et al., 2016. Production of fluconazole-loaded polymeric micelles using membrane and microfluidic dispersion devices. Membranes, 6 (2), pp.1-19.Publisher
MDPI (© the authors)Version
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/Publication date
2016ISSN
2077-0375Publisher version
Language
- en